


The Very Verge of Remembrance

by LovelyMrsMormont



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms, Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux, Phantom of the Opera (2004), Phantom of the Opera - Lloyd Webber
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-09
Updated: 2013-06-08
Packaged: 2017-12-14 09:27:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/835354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LovelyMrsMormont/pseuds/LovelyMrsMormont
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Find him, and he will keep you safe... when I am gone." Raoul's<br/>mysterious dying wish leads Christine once more to the world beneath the<br/>skeleton of the Opéra Populaire. Erik and Christine are reunited among the<br/>chaos of murders and schemes above ground, and together they must decode the<br/>meaning behind Raoul's words. 2 yrs post-PotO, WIP.</p><p>Posted on my ff.net account under Smaointe Salach.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Overture

“Hush, Raoul.” Christine put a cool cloth to his forehead, scorching with fever, and pressed her lips gently upon his trembling cheek.

Raoul had been sick with a fever for nearly four days. He’d had a small cut from a razor blade upon his hand, and though he had treated the wound carefully, it had leaked green fluid and smelled putrid just days after sustaining the injury. Soon enough, Raoul was taken with fever, and now he lay in the bed he normally shared with Christine in their spacious Paris home.

She fretted over him like a mother hen, but his condition only worsened with time. Nearly two years had passed since the Opéra Populaire had burned, and in that time Christine had come to love Raoul more deeply than she had thought possible. They had tried for two years to conceive a child, of course, but for whatever reason God had not deemed it their fate to be parents.

So now it was just the two of them, aside from the smattering of servants flitting about the house, as Christine tried to cool Raoul's feverish head. 

"Christine," he murmured, slowly turning his head toward her so that his glassy eyes bored into hers. "If I die, you must go to him. He will keep you safe. Find him."

Christine furrowed her brow. She was baffled. Raoul and Christine had become pariahs in his elevated society since their marriage; it was not exactly considered proper or appropriate for a vicomte to marry a stage performer. Never, though had Christine felt unsafe. If for some reason the worst were to pass and Raoul did die, Christine would inherit the houses and wealth... unless she encountered some sort of threat from Raoul's brother. He always looked at Christine with disdain, rarely spoke to her... but would he actually go so far as to put Christine in danger? She scrunched her brow even further and cooed a soft 'shhh...' into Raoul's ear. She pressed the cool cloth against his cheek.

"Find him, Christine," Raoul said again, his eyes burning with what Christine interpreted as feverish mania. "Find him and he will keep you safe... when I am gone."

Christine shook her head, confused and saddened. "Raoul, my sweet," she whispered, "you are delusional from your sickness. I do not know of whom you speak. I am safe, and, anyway, you are not going to die."

Raoul shook his head against the pillow and a solitary tear squeezed from his glistening eye. "You know him well enough," Raoul said, his voice rasping from the effort of speech. "Your Angel of Music."

Christine felt her heart skip a beat, then flutter into a rapid, uneven rhythm. Raoul wanted her to find the Phantom - he who had burned the Opéra, taken Christine prisoner, threatened Raoul's life, extorted and murdered... Raoul wanted Christine to find this man and cling to him for safety?

Truly, she thought, the fever had driven him mad.

There couldn't possibly be a less safe place for her than in her Angel's arms, could there? Of course, over the past two years, Christine had thought of him night and day. She had wondered in quiet moments if he was alive, if he was healthy, maybe even happy. She had worried that in their last moments together she had taken his heart and shattered it like glass, and she wished with all her might that she could at least let him know that she cared for him. Still, though, there was fear beneath it all. Christine was horribly afraid that if she was ever discovered by her Angel of Music, that he would kill her husband and take her prisoner again. She feared that he would destroy her happiness, the bliss into which she had submerged herself after the joyous day of her wedding to Raoul.

She had begged Raoul not to put a wedding announcement in the newspaper, because she knew that He would find it and be crushed. Raoul had insisted, and Christine had felt pangs of guilt mingled with her joy. That was how it had been since the beginning of it all. Joy and sorrow, intertwined like lovers in her mind and heart, burning and freezing her soul at once as she tried to balance her guilt over the Phantom and her happiness with Raoul.

And now, as Raoul lay very ill, he was commanding Christine to find the Phantom. Why? Ostensibly to keep her safe... Christine found it puzzling and yet understandable that Raoul would think this way. In all the times the Phantom had struck others, he had never once put Christine's life in jeopardy. He would always protect her, more like a guardian angel than the fallen one he purported to be. If Raoul had some reason to fear for Christine's life, and was fretting over her safety, perhaps it did make sense that he would turn in his fevered mind to the Phantom. With him, wherever he was, she would be hidden, provided for, protected.

But none of it mattered, Christine told herself with gritted teeth, because Raoul was not going to die. But even as she tried to convince herself of this, she could see the life slipping from Raoul's eyes. His sallow, sunken cheeks crinkled as the corners of his lips curled up in a tiny, final smile and he whispered once more,

"Find him, Christine."

Then the glint in his eyes was gone and as if he was staring through her, and his lips went slack. In that instant, Christine knew that he was gone. She realized with a stab of grief that his last spoken word had been her name, and she huddled over him and dissolved into heaving sobs.

She was not hysterical, but rather emotionally overcome with sadness. She had been steeling herself for Raoul's death for two days now, but it did not make it any easier to bear when he slipped from the world. Her confusion about his dying wish only served to complicate the tempest raging in Christine's grief-stricken mind. 

She stayed with Raoul for an hour before a doctor was called. The doctor pronounced Raoul dead and arranged for his body to be removed from the house. He gave Christine some opium to make her sleep and checked her for signs of transmitted infection

The next day, Christine placed a notice in the newspaper announcing that Raoul, Vicomte de Chagny had joined his Lord in Heaven. She included the fact that his widow, Christine (née Daaé), was overcome with grief.

She placed the notice in every newspaper in town, praying with all her might that her Angel of Music would see it and emerge from the shadows to honor Raoul's dying wish - to keep her safe from unseen and unknown dangers. 

The day after Raoul's funeral, Christine had heard nothing from the Phantom, nor seen him in any place she'd been, so she decided to take matters into her own hands. She walked briskly and determinedly from her house, the hood of her cape shrouding her porcelain face. She did not stop walking until she stood before a very familiar monument - the skeleton of the Opéra Populaire.

A/N: Dear Reader, this is intended to be a novel-length E/C fic, rated M for violence, sexual themes, and language. I am currently bedridden with Hyperemesis Gravidarum and am on a Zofran pump, so I literally have nothing to do but write. You can expect updates at least daily. Please follow and review the story so I can know how people are enjoying it as it progresses. Many thanks for your readership.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Christine finds Erik, but the homecoming isn't quite what she expected.

Christine pushed open the side entry of the opera house. The front had been locked, and when she had finally found an entrance, she was astonished at what she discovered. The inside of the opera house was completely destroyed by the fire that had been started two years earlier by her Angel's... tantrum. Perhaps it would be more fair to categorize it as an overreaction to Christine's unmasking him. 

It didn't matter now, Christine thought ruefully as she pushed her hood back farther from her face. Either way, the Opéra Populaire was in ruins. It still smelled like burning in here, it still had the fetid odor of a dead place filled with dead things and dead memories. 

Christine ventured through the auditorium, marveling at the sight of the once magnificent crystal chandelier lying in pieces, strewn across rows of seats. She ascended onto the stage and turned toward the audience that consisted only of ghosts. She began to sing the aria from Hannibal, the very same aria in which she had triumphed that night two years earlier.

"There will never be a day when I won't think of you..." 

Her last note, instead of thundering magnificently throughout the auditorium, trailed off into silence as Christine thought of many people who were now gone from her life - people upon whom she had relied for strength. Meg and Madame Giry, her Angel of Music, her beloved Raoul. All gone.

She stalked dejectedly from the stage, the hem of her black mourning gown trailing in the dust on the floor. Christine managed to push through the fallen, charred debris until she reached the room that had been her dressing room in the backstage area. She pushed open the door, smearing the soot and smoke grime from her hand onto her dark dress and stepping cautiously inside. It broke her heart to see the room in its state. The wallpaper glue having melted in the heat of the fire, there were curls of paper falling haphazardly from the walls. Her vanity was destroyed by fire and a ceiling beam had collapsed straight into the middle of the room. But... the piece for which she had come... there it was.

The mirror.

There was smoke damage to the front of it, but Christine was able to wrench it open and reveal the dark staircase leading down to the bowels of the opera house. Taking a deep and trembling breath, she stepped past the mirror and began stepping cautiously down the slippery stone stairs. Soon enough she was bathed entirely in darkness, and Christine realized with a pang of fear and apprehension that she had no lantern, no torch, no candle, even, to light her way. How stupid of her, she admonished herself, to start walking down the stairs blindly.

It was too late now, she thought. She'd be blind going back up, or she'd be blind continuing, and if she continued she would reach him sooner. Her heart fluttered a bit at that thought, that she would see him soon, and she wondered what his reaction would be. She reached out around herself for support and guidance as she continued down the long, winding stairs. Would he be glad to see her? Would the embers of the past glow brightly enough to make a reunification possible? Or would he cast her out, enraged at their last parting, and doom her to her unknown fate?

After more of such self-doubting thought, Christine reached the lake at the bottom of the opera house. She suddenly realized that she had no way of crossing it. Well, she cursed herself, what had she been expecting? Of course he would have the gondola where he was, not over here on the other shore waiting for her to arrive and use it. Faced with no other choice, Christine kicked off her satin shoes and untied her heavy cloak. She placed them carefully on the stone ground and stepped into the water, which was lukewarm and felt like a bath gone tepid. Less afraid suddenly than she had been, Christine pushed herself forward with her legs until she could no hardly stand in the water, and then she began to swim. Even from here, she could hear distant organ music, wailing and sorrowful, and she longed to be by the Phantom's side for a reason she would not have been able to explain.

She pushed through the cloudy green water until she reached the portcullis through which she could see the Phantom's ransacked home. She pulled herself up to the portcullis and gripped the rusty grate, gazing through the holes and gritting her teeth against the pounding and dissonant chords being pressed out onto the instrument by the organist seated on the bench.

She could see the back of him, clad in a wrinkled linen shirt, his hair disheveled, and she gulped. She'd dreamed of his face for two years. In some dreams, she had slapped his good cheek, hard, for all that he'd done to her. In others, she relived their one and only kiss and saw him smile meekly and then dissolve into tears, over and over again.

In Christine's dreams, the Phantom never wore his mask. 

She gripped the grate more tightly, feeling the ragged edges of the metal dig into her fingers and palms. She had approached quietly, silently even, but now she was shivering and she could take it no longer. She called out over the din of the organ, her voice sounding not as sure as she would have liked it to do.

"Angel?"

The organ stopped, abruptly, and the Phantom buried his face in his hands. He did not turn around to face Christine or acknowledge her in any way, and when she saw him shaking with sobs she was confused. Then realization dawned on her. He'd heard her voice from upstairs, when she'd sung alone on the stage. He'd heard her call out now. But surely there was no chance she was actually here, at least in his mind, so he almost certainly thought himself insane.

Christine sighed impatiently. She had no time to convince him that she was not an apparition or a figment of his imagination. 

"Angel..." she said again, her voice now echoing in the silence of the chamber. This time, the Phantom turned swiftly on the organ bench and looked up with wide and wild eyes. Christine tried hard not to gasp. He did not wear his mask, but that was not what shocked her about his face. It was his haggard appearance, the look of grief and sorrow and depression that he wore on his countenance, that stunned her into silence and made her eyes burn.

She lost all control then, and she began to cry as soon as her eyes met his. Perhaps it was her own grief over Raoul that brought her so instantaneously to tears. Perhaps it was simply the shock of being here again, two years after her traumatic parting with her Angel. But Christine suspected the reason for her sobs was the look of pain that was printed so clearly on the Phantom's face in the instant he realized that she was really and truly here.

"Christine..." His whisper echoed off of the damp stone walls and reverberated in Her ears, bring back a flood of memories in a flash. The hundreds of times she'd heard him whisper from somewhere unseen, the moment she realized he was in love with her, the second she tore his mask from his face during Don Juan Triumphant. Christine shivered harder, abruptly overwhelmed. "Christine..."

"Oh, Angel." Christine shook with her cries and gripped the portcullis so hard that she saw little streams of blood coursing from her clenched palms. "Please, I know that I have hurt you, abandoned you. I know you should hate me, but I beg you to open the gate and let me in. Please, Angel."

"Erik."

She was so taken aback by the staccato bite in his voice that it took her a moment to realize he'd just given her his name.

"Your angel is dead and rotting in hell. There is no more opera of which to be a Phantom or a Ghost. I am... simply Erik."

As he spoke, he stood slowly from the bench and waded out into the water. He pulled a crank and the portcullis slowly rose. Christine swam quickly under it and noted with relief that the water quickly shallowed to where she could walk easily to the shore.

She tentatively approached the Phantom - Erik - and held out her hands as if she were reaching for a life preserver in a churning sea. Erik recoiled slightly from her, shocking her into retreat. He turned briskly over his shoulder and waded back up to his organ bench. Christine did not follow him. Instead she padded along the wet stone floor, avoiding shards of glass from broken mirrors that imperiled her bare feet. She walked over to a little chair with a broken back and sat down delicately. Her black silk dress was completely destroyed by her swim, and she was soaked through. She shivered fiercely and waited for Erik to speak. At last, he did, though he was facing away from Christine.

"I saw in the newspaper that your husband is dead."

"He is," Christine affirmed, her voice cracking.

"What happened?" Erik asked lightly, as if he did not care. Christine gulped and forced herself to answer with a single word.

"Fever."

From behind, she saw Erik nod his head in understanding. "I am sorry... that you are grieving," he said lowly, clearing his throat awkwardly. "I saw no mention of issue in the death announcement."

"No." Christine shook her head. "We had no children."

"But you tried, didn't you?" Erik seethed suddenly, turning on Christine with a vicious look in his eyes. "He touched you, he fucked you, didn't he, Christine?" He spoke through clenched teeth, and for a brief moment Christine was both appalled and frightened.

She shrugged helplessly and shook her head sadly. "He was my husband." Her eyes welled with heavy tears, shed for Raoul, and shed because her Angel was so unhappy with the choice she had made.

Erik hauled himself very purposefully and slowly from the bench, never taking his eyes from Christine's. "You never once came to me in the last two years," he noted. "You come to me now, now that your husband is dead and gone. Why, Christine? Why would you torture me in this way? Does your cruelty know no bounds?" He began to walk very deliberately toward her, his boots crunching the shards of glass underfoot. "I will not be the second fiddle, Christine. I refuse to be fed the scraps that boy left behind. He's already used you, ruined you, and all because you chose it. You chose him. More specifically, you chose to leave me. And now you come back because... Why? Because you need to be loved?"

"No... No, Erik, that's not it at all... you were never just the man in second place," Christine insisted, feeling hot tears tumbling down her cheeks. She shook her head fervently and said, "You don't understand. It was Raoul who sent me to you. He told me to come to you after he died."

Erik narrowed his eyes and took a small step backward. "You're right. I do not understand."

"Raoul lay dying, Erik, and he told me to find you because you were the only one who could keep me safe. And, he knew as well as I, that you were the only one who could ever hope to fill the void he would leave in my heart." Christine looked into Erik's eyes beseechingly, imploring him to comprehend why s yhe had fled her posh home and snuck into his lair. "Even I doubted him, but now I know, Erik, that if I can not have Raoul, then I must have you. It is not that I preferred him to you. You gave me an impossible choice that night two years ago. It pained me so much to leave you. But I could never have you both, and he loved me just as much as you did."

"Yet you still chose him," Erik pointed out, ignoring what Christine had said about Raoul's dying wish.

"I chose him because I was afraid," Christine insisted. "I was a scared little girl, but I'm not so little anymore. Erik, there is a chance that if you send me back to my home, I will be killed by a man who seeks the money Raoul left behind for me."

Again, Erik narrowed his eyes. "By whom?" he pressed.

"Raoul's brother. The Comte, Victor. He hates me, and he would sooner see me dead than let me have the fortune he sees as rightfully being his."

At that, the man who had been known as The Phantom of the Opera straightened his spine and sighed deeply. He shook his head. "If your safety is in danger, you must stay here."

"Thank you, Erik." Christine collapsed onto her arms on the little table before her, sighing with relief and thanking God that she had made him see. 

"But, I will not be used by you, Christine," Erik continued. "If you harbor no true affection for me, you must be truthful. Please, I beg it of you, do not wound me more deeply than you already have."

Christine furrowed her brow concernedly and rose slowly from the chair. She took a step forward and closed the gap between herself and Erik. She cautiously snaked her arms around his torso and felt him hover his hands over her back as he reacted with shock to the sudden physical contact between them. Christine pulled herself closer against him, meshing her body flush against his, and felt the warmth of his palms through the material on her wet, cold back.

"Of course I bear you affection," Christine scoffed, sounding insulted as his shirt muffled her voice. Their embrace was not suggestive or sexual in nature, but rather an expression on Christine's part of genuine emotion. "You may say you are no longer my Angel, but I do not believe you. You always have been, and you always will be."

A/N: Yay! I think I will be able to write this pretty quickly considering all I am doing for the foreseeable future is literally lying in bed hooked up to machines, typing on my iPad. Lol. Reviews are the best medicine; thanks for reading!


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